The thing about fantasy worlds is that they require a bit of a new language; at the very least new words. Or familiar words with unfamiliar spellings. When I was writing Tattered Heart I selected and created words to evoke the culture of this story.
I didn’t really consider the pronunciation of these words because I knew as I formed the consonants and vowels how they sounded. In my head. And then my words were read by fabulous actors for my audiobook…. and they butchered them.
It was brilliant and hilarious and suddenly I had to consider that not every reader would automatically know the correct way to pronounce Bion.
Thanks to the audiobook performances, however, I can give readers a rare treat for a fantasy book. Not phonetic spellings of odd words. Not a glossary at the end of the novel. No. I give to you a pronunciation guide – with all of the fumbles and flubs and funny lines my actors gave… and also the correct pronunciation of some of the more peculiar words in Tattered Heart.
I hope it amuses you as much as it does me.
THIS IS HILARIOUS. Bee-eye-on. And so so clever. XD I usually use super boring names in my fantasies, but I LOVE these awesome names that you’ve used and I definitely cracked up.
Mee-leek!! XD
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thank you!!!! I was afraid I’d be the lone girl in the corner laughing at her own jokes 🙂
I was going to say that I stole a book of 40,000 baby names from my sister (because I did) but then I realized most of the names in the video I made up or stole. Aribella and Bion I heard other places. Melik and Rosealine I came up with (granted Rosealine was adapted from Rosalin). Feyin, dVoryan and Viyin I invented from Russian syllables (I asked a friend who is Russian for words for things in my book like warrior or nobility and mixed and matched the syllables). I was surprised how well the actors did with those last three 🙂
[…] provides a pronunciation guide for Tattered Heart (including a video of her audiobook narrators having difficulty getting the names […]
I know I tweeted you about this, but just want to say again that this is so much fun! It is something you really don’t think about – how many interpretations for a name there can be. And I guess because I never listen to audiobooks I never thought about how difficult it might be for a professional audiobook reader to actually get it right. At least they were good natured about it!
oh we had so much fun with it 🙂 I know I said this in the post but it really never occurred to me either that there would be any questions about how to pronounce the words – because I’d been dealing with them for so long. But as soon as I started casting, the actors would ask how to pronounce this or that and I figured out quickly which words I needed to prep them on. Still, wrapping your tongue around unfamiliar words is tricky so it was fun to laugh with them in the studio and then be able to put it altogether to share!